Official Selection: 2012 Berlin Film Festival

Opens in Los Angeles on Friday, January 25

About Tabu

Pilar spends her first years of retirement trying to straighten up the world and dealing with other people’s guilt, an increasingly frustrating task these days. She takes part in peace vigils, collaborates with Catholic charities, wants to lodge young Polish girls coming to Lisbon on a Taize ecumenical meeting and constantly hangs up and takes down an ugly painting made by a friend so as not to offend his feelings should it not be in view when he comes to visit.

She is mostly troubled by her neighbor Aurora’s loneliness, a temperamental and eccentric octogenarian who escapes to the casino whenever she has any money on her. She talks constantly about her daughter who seems to not want to see her, has hangovers from anti-depressants and suspects her Cape-Verdean maid Santa is wickedly practicing voodoo against her. We know little of Santa, who is sparse with her words, follows orders and thinks that everyone should mind their own business. She goes to adult literacy classes and practices at night by reading a young reader’s edition of Robinson Crusoe stretched out on her boss’s couch while smoking cigarettes.

Before dying, Aurora will make a mysterious request and the other two join efforts to accomplish it. She wants to meet a man, Gian Luca Ventura, someone nobody knew existed until then. Pilar and Santa will find that he does exist but are informed he is no longer sane. Ventura has a secret pact with Aurora and a story to tell; a story that occurred fifty years ago, shortly before the beginning of the Portuguese colonial war. It starts like this: "Aurora had a farm in Africa at the foothill of Mount Tabu..."

Provided courtesy of Adopt Films. Not rated. Running time: 118 minutes. In Portuguese, with English subtitles.

Tabu Critics' Quotes

“Tabu is one of those truly unique movies you can get tongue-tied just trying to describe: a tragic pop pastiche? A lyrical Old Hollywood melodrama projected on a bedsheet? A celluloid curio à la Barnum's Fiji mermaid? At such times, it's better to stick with a simple ‘wonderful.’” -Nick Pinkerton, Village Voice

“A brilliantly nuanced, romantic whopper. In Gomes’s ingenious vision, the smoothed-out, tamped-down, serenely cultured solitude of the modern city, with its air of constructive purpose in tiny orbits, rests on a dormant volcano of passionate memories packed with adventurous misdeeds, both political and erotic. One of the most original and inventive—as well as trenchantly political and painfully romantic—movies of recent years. It’s a film in a rare genre: its plot is so adroitly and sensitively imagined and realized that a mere telling of the things that take place would suffice to reveal the depth of the director’s imaginative discernment—his ample and nuanced vision of the extraordinary elements and implications of ordinary lives.” -Richard Brody, The New Yorker

“A playful, deeply romantic shape shifter of a movie. these gorgeous actors, with their haunting gazes and suggestive gestures, are essential to the film’s strange magic. Gian Luca and Aurora are figures of memory, figments of fantasy, characters in a movie, embodied with the longing of flesh and blood.” -Dennis Lim, The New York Times

About Outside the Box [Office]

Outside the Box [Office] is a weekly showcase for upcoming releases highlighting world cinema, documentary and independent film titles. Recognizing a need for greater diversity on campus, the series will draw from around the globe to present movies that may challenge, inspire or simply entertain.

Check-In & Reservations

This screening is free of charge and open to the public. Please bring a valid USC ID or print out of your reservation confirmation, which will automatically be sent to your e-mail account upon successfully making an RSVP through this website. Doors will open at 5:30 P.M.

All SCA screenings are OVERBOOKED to ensure seating capacity in the theater, therefore seating is not guaranteed based on RSVPs. The RSVP list will be checked in on a first-come, first-served basis until the theater is full. Once the theater has reached capacity, we will no longer be able to admit guests, regardless of RSVP status.

Parking

The USC School of Cinematic Arts is located at 900 W. 34th St., Los Angeles, CA 90007. Parking passes may be purchased for $10.00 at USC Entrance Gate #5, located at the intersection of W. Jefferson Blvd. & McClintock Avenue. We recommend parking in outdoor Lot M or V, or Parking Structure D, at the far end of 34th Street. Please note that Parking Structure D cannot accommodate tall vehicles such as SUVs. Free street parking is also available along Jefferson Blvd.